


don't go gently (but keep your heart)

by 1000ft



Series: hey arizona [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Hunk and Allura for your health, Pre-Relationship, Vague Confessions, just two guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000ft/pseuds/1000ft
Summary: Well. Okay. He can admit that he's passed the point of no return. Lance used to be a dick, but then he wasn’t, and then he and Keith were partners, and now Keith is vaguely certain he could fight Zarkon and win (this time) if Lance asked him to.





	don't go gently (but keep your heart)

Keith shrugs his arm in Lance’s grip without much intent. “Lance, I can do this myself.”

 

“That’s a weak argument, and you probably wouldn’t do it well enough to fix the problem, so shut up.” Lance is striding his way towards the medbay, and Keith watches him watch the blood dripping from Keith’s knuckles with narrowed eyes.

 

Keith huffs, as is his usual response when Lance shows blunt, remorseless concern. In the beginning, back on Earth, after Zarkon was a concern but before Lotor, the same concern had been hidden behind layers of sarcasm and contempt, but Keith feels that they’ve reached a certain point--they’re friends, they’re an ex-leader and ex-right hand. It counts for something. Maybe a lot of things, if they’ve reached the point of bodily-dragging-to-the-medbay.

 

Lance fills the silence when it settles around their footsteps. “It’s called _moisturizing,_ Keith. _Lotion._ We have some. In our very own castleship. You can put it on your face, your hands, you can even jack-off--!”

“ _Dude_.”

 

He throws the hand that doesn’t have Keith’s elbow in a deathgrip as if to say _I’m just sayin’!_

 

“I just didn’t notice,” Keith grumbles, not quite embarrassed but not quite shameless either. “My gloves never chaffed before and even the damn desert wasn’t as dry as it is here.”

 

Lance huffs, which Keith figures is Lance’s usual response to Keith’s--admittedly. He can admit it, okay?--lack of awareness for self-care. They lapse back into silence when they reach the elevator. The temperature of the castleship does not change as the pod ascends.

 

Throughout his stunted time at the Galaxy Garrison, Keith learned how to calculate the desired velocity of a ship depending on a celestial body’s gravitational pull. Professors hymned lectures on calculus and theorems, _if a craft approaches point A at the speed of light, how many planets will it pass before reaching the edge of the Andromeda galaxy_.

 

No one told him that space was cold.

 

Not that anyone _needed to--_ any kid enrolling in a space exploration program knows that space is cold. What Keith isn’t prepared for is the savage, _bitter_ cold that clings--to the castle floors, the lions, the creases of Keith’s jacket--like permafrost, something that halts the moisture in the hair and has him hoarding tissues in his utility belt for a perpetually runny nose.

 

It’s in the lull of activity after they’ve (reluctantly) welcomed Lotor aboard that Keith’s skin, up until which point had weathered the recycled castle air, the barely-insulated Marmora outposts, a host of alien worlds, cracks across his knuckles. And he hadn’t even been _doing_ anything.   

 

If Lance hadn’t found Keith standing in the training room doorway trying to shove cracked, bloody knuckles back into his gloves, Keith more than likely would have forgotten about it until the gloves came off again.

 

As it was.

 

Lance propels him out of the elevator and into the medbay. “Unbel _ievable_ …”

 

Keith spares a wave to Allura and Hunk, squished half under the control panel by the healing pods, doing space-knows-what to the operating system. Lance ignors them both in favor of careening Keith to the left, through the room lined with cots, and on to the cabinets tucked away into the farthest corner of the room.

 

“Sit,” Lance instructs, kicking at the cot closest to them. Keith rubs his freed elbow, eyeing Lance as he eyes the first-aid supplies; Keith wonders if having a crush on this over-concerned dork was making him more compliant.

 

Well. Okay. He can _admit_ these things to himself, he’s a twenty year old soldier. Lance used to be a dick, but then he wasn’t, and then he and Keith were partners, and now Keith is vaguely certain he could fight Zarkon and win (this time) if Lance asked him to.

 

Keith sits on the cot.

 

Lance rummages and whirls, bottle in one hand and a roll of bandage in the other. “Hands.”

 

Palms up and eyes rolling, Keith presses his elbows to his knees and waits for Lance to drag a stool over. Sitting and hunched forward, Keith is face-to-face and probably-too-close to bright blue eyes and faint, sun-hungry freckles. Lance’s lips press into a tight line, but the furrow between his eyebrows, the tell that says he’s truly upset, is nonexistent.

 

Keith relaxes is shoulders and doesn’t try as hard as usual to not tap his feet impatiently on the floor.

 

With gentle, maybe-not hesitant motions, Lance’s fingers wrap around Keith’s wrists to twist his palms down. The blood caked across his hands is aggravating already dry skin. Lance’s own hands, longer and thinner than Keith’s, set about whipping the blood away.

 

This part of the medbay is quiet, humming castle no louder than air conditioning in hot summers. Keith keeps his eyes trained on his hands, pale skin a startling contrast against the blue paladin. With the quiet settling, Lance’s breathing steady across from him, Keith feels that, maybe just this once, space wasn’t quite as bitterly cold as it was a few moments ago.

 

Keith keeps a wince within in the confines of tightened shoulders when gentle hands ease a disinfectant across his knuckles. He’s no stranger to being patched up and sewn back together, but experience didn’t make the sensation any more enjoyable.

 

Lance clears his throat, and Keith’s eyes traveled to the other’s face. And, yeah, maybe this particular experience is a little more easy on the eyes.

 

Keith lets himself stare from under his lashes, head bent over the hands on his, hair inching past the curve of his ear to better hide his face. If Lance is so hellbent on taking care of him, then Keith deserves some quality pining time. Which he doesn’t do _all the time, thank you Pidge._ He has scheduled slots of time for this. Like an adult.  

 

Lance’s gaze snaps up before Keith can shake himself out of his thoughts and lower his own. “Hey--uh. I’m--done with this part, so the lotion shit that goes next won’t sting as bad. Sound good?”

 

Keith ignores the heat at the back of his neck--caught staring, how typically embarrassing--and nods, but not before latching onto the way Lance had had to clear his throat, as if having Keith already watching him made him pause.

 

His gaze goes back to their hands, but whatever victory the damn butterflies dive-bombing in his stomach feel is short lived with Lance uses both hands to hold his own, thumbs rubbing lotion into cracked, scarred knuckles. Keith watches Lance’s thumbs dip into the spaces between his fingers, tracing the curve of bone, pressing the lightest bit where Keith’s hand meets his wrist. The gentleness reminds Keith of blurred memories of hands soothing over ruffled hair, but he’s not sure if they’re his memories or his imagination.

 

When he looks back up through his bangs, heart somewhere in his throat, Keith meets blue, blue eyes and does what his impulsiveness does best.

 

“How are you so good at this?”

 

Said in a rush, low for the short space between their faces. Keith holds the wince in the line of his shoulders, Lance’s widening eyes not unlike the shock of disinfectant. He braces for a nonchalant _I’m good at everything, obviously, that’s why all the ladies love m--_

 

Instead, he gets a wry chuckle. “My older sister’s kids. They wanted me to watch them a lot, and you know, kids. They get scraped up.”

 

Keith watches Lance’s face soften. The worry lines around his eyes he tries to hide and the tightness in his smile that he thought no one else could see fades.

 

“I learned to put bandages on cuts and wrap ankles so Andrea would stop threatening to kick my ass every time I didn’t put a bandaid on her kids. Pretty handy now, am I right?” The crooked grin Keith receives is so genuine that Keith’s mouth twitches up involuntarily.

 

“Yeah,” Keith huffs a laugh. “The ass-kicking fear must be pretty ingrained if you’re even careful with _me_.”

 

Lance tilts his head and Keith has a second of _Oh Shit_ panic that he’s said the wrong thing. Lance’s voice is easy when he speaks, as if he can feel Keith’s sudden stiffness. “Why wouldn’t I be careful with you?”

 

“I mean... “ Keith drops his eyes back to his hands. Blood cleared and lotion soaking into desperately dry skin, Lance should have been wrapping them and being on his way, but brown fingers still curl around his, thumbs still trace the ridges of Keith’s knuckles.

 

If his breath hitched, he’d deny it.

 

He clears his throat. “I just mean that--you were really gentle just now, and you’re a--a gentle person, I guess?” Dear Alfor just shoot him while he’s ahead. Keith doesn’t dare look to catalogue Lance’s expression. “Shit, just! You just cleaned my knuckles and now you’re--you’re holding my hands and you’re a gentle person, Lance, at your core, I think, and you’re not usually that way around me, uh.”

 

Keith does wince this time, visibly, but when Lance’s fingers twitch against his own, as if hesitating, deciding if they are welcome there or not, Keith closes his own fingers--short, callused, chubby fingers that never seemed to fit the rest of him--around Lance’s wrists.

 

The sound of the castleship shudders around them. In the main room of the medbay, metal clatters and an Altean princess swears.

 

“Huh,” Lance murmurs. Keith chances a look to his expression and blinks hard at the...the _fondness_ there. If his hands had been free, Keith thinks he’d have one to his chest; _be still, my small gay heart._

 

“I don’t think, uh,” Lance continues, looking so genuinely bashful that Keith wants to leave the room to curse the void of space for letting him crush on Lance McClain. “I don’t think I’m quite that gentle, my guy.”

 

Keith tightens the grip he had around Lance’s wrists, unconsciously. A feeling like bubbling tar, hot and thick, clings to the back of his throat. With Keith gone with the Blade, the Coalition, Lance in Red...Keith had assumed that the crippling insecurities--because he isn’t blind, even if he has no idea how to reassure his right-hand man--had at least been assuaged to such a degree that they didn’t dictate Lance’s perceptions of how people saw him quite so much.

 

Keith feels like he’s hit a new record for being wrong lately.

 

Lance is still talking, and Keith’s heart rate spikes at the beginning of a crease forming between Lance’s eyebrows. “I mean, we’re in the middle of a war--I’d be pretty insulted if you called me something like _gentle_. You wanna see the callous on my trigger finger? Ha!”

“Lance, that’s not--” Keith shakes a hand free from Lance’s grip to run it through his hair. Whatever ointment is coated on his knuckles makes the strands stick awry. Why did talking and feelings and _comforting have to be so damn hard._ “I’m trying to say that _despite_ the war you’re gentle. Despite everything we’ve been through, you’re still Lance; you’re still...you tuck Pidge into bed and leave Shiro food when he doesn’t eat and you--you put lotion on my hands when they’re dry!”

 

Keith huffs, breathless and frustrated. He can feel the red pooling in his face, but keeps his eyes trained on Lance like the stubborn voice at the back of his skull is yelling at him to do. Keith is ninety-nine percent sure he’s sweating more now than he does facing down armies of Galra sentries.

 

With a hand free, Keith reaches shaking fingers to press his thumb to the forming crease between Lance’s eyes. He smiles for the brief second at the way Lance goes cross-eyed following the motion and for the way his brow relaxes at Keith’s touch.

 

Lance takes a breath that pushes his shoulders higher before straightening his back. He meets Keith’s eyes before taking his hand back into his own. “That was really gay, Keith.”

 

The suffocating heaviness at the back of his throat sinks, quite suddenly, to nothing. Keith hadn’t realized his shoulders were tensing until they relaxed again.

 

He raises a single eyebrow at Lance as if to say _And?_

 

Lance’s answering grin is blinding. Keith’s not above admitting he’s proud of the pink tint to the top of Lance’s ears. “Careful, samurai, or else I’ll think you _like_ me. _”_

 

Keith raised his other eyebrow. _And?_

 

“Uh,” Lance says.

 

“I’m just saying,” Keith shrugs. If he doesn’t think too much about what he’s saying, he can say it without imploding. Right? “If it just so happened that you’d like _me.._. I would coincidentally feel that same way.”

 

The laugh that echoes throughout the room is as soothing, if not moreso, than lotion on cracked skin. “That’s such a complicated way of saying it, babe. I have no idea why I like you.”

 

“Yeah?” Keith isn’t sure what his face is doing--is it normal for grins to feel that wide? Should he tune it down?--but he can’t find the will to _care._

 

“So you can agree with me that you’re a gentle person, while also being a badass ninja sharpshooter?”

 

“To be fair I regretted ‘badass ninja sharpshooter’ the second it left my mouth. But I guess if it’s you telling me, I have to believe in, for risk of getting my ass kicked.”

 

Keith chuckles, eyes lowering to their hands. He skims short fingers over the pulse point of Lance’s wrist. “I dunno, I think you’d give me a run for my money.”

 

“Oh, _really?”_

 

“That’s the first and last time you’ll ever hear me say that.”

 

“...Even if I beat you in a fight?”

 

Keith pretends to mull it over. “Best two out of three?”

 

“Why? Afraid you’ll need a few tries to beat me?”

 

“Wrap my damn knuckles and we’ll go to the training deck, Blue.”

 

The clanging from the main chamber of the medbay echoes to their cot, muffled around the crystalline green-blue sound of Lance’s laughter.

 

If one of Keith’s hands stays in Lance’s when they leave for the training deck, the other castleship inhabitants are none the wiser.

**Author's Note:**

> “Pidge will be insufferable,” Allura muttered, handing a handful of plastic cards to Hunk. “They were very insistent that this wouldn’t happen until season seven.”
> 
> Hunk nodded, counting his Space Dollars. “My boy can get it, Princess. Everyone knows that.”


End file.
